Saturday, October 03, 2009

Undokai - Sports Day

10.01 SportsDay-2
The first year boys performing their group exercise.

The Sports Day is an important event in the year of any student in Japan. The entire day is given over to various foot races, relays, synchronized dances or exercises, and other games. Each class amasses points over the day and in the end the pride in the winning classes shows. It makes me wish I had a chance to be a student for this day, while, at the same time, it solidifies my goal to become a full-fledged teacher--either here or back the the USA.

10.01 SportsDay-1
7AM, setting up the ground.

The layout of my current jr. high school also gives me a chance to pull out the selective focus lens I have and take a few shots from the buildings overlooking the grounds.

10.01 SportsDay-3
And the crowd goes wild...

5 comments:

owenandbenjamin said...

I love Undokai. I wish they had these days in the US.

angryparsnip said...

I always thought that Sports Day looked like fun !

That's a nice thought, but stay in Japan. . . American schools seem to be poorly paid babysitters lately fill with kids trying to do the lest amount of work while texting and parents suing the school district when the teachers take away the babies phones.

Sports Day would never work over here, unless we started it at pre-k level... and then you have the entitled parents to deal with..

zonjineko said...

Nice pics of the sports day - are those done with a tilt-shift lens or a lensbaby?

sleepytako said...

I keep on saying "selective focus" when I mean "tilt-shift." Duh. Yes, I have a Lensbaby 3G and I used it for those shots along with the one titled "jump"

zonjineko said...

Nice - been meaning to buy one of those for quite a while. It's very cool effect for those aerial type views.